The sport's governing bodies will look to bring greater consistency to decisions that saw several top stars being penalised

Once bitten: Tiger Woods fell foul of 'enhanced technological evidence' back in September (Photo: Getty Images)

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Golf's governing bodies will continue to use TV evidence in deciding upon rules violations, but will limit technology that saw Tiger Woods penalised earlier this year.

The R&A and USGA revealed several changes to the Decisions on the Rules of Golf on Tuesday, the most significant being the use of video technology to determine whether a ball at rest has moved.

The modification - which comes into effect from January 1, 2014 - was decided upon before the incident involving Woods in the BMW Championship in September, where the world number one tried to remove a twig from beside his ball before playing his third shot on the first hole at Conway Farms.

Woods felt his ball had only oscillated before he ran up a double-bogey six, but high-definition video footage showed that it had slightly shifted its position and his score was amended to a quadruple-bogey eight.

Speaking a few days later, Woods spoke of the "huge transition" brought about by HDTV and pointed out he was subjected to more television coverage than any other player.

The New Decision 18/4 states that "The Decision ensures that a player is not penalised under Rule 18-2 in circumstances where the fact that the ball had changed location could not reasonably have been seen without the use of enhanced technology."

David Rickman, the R&A's executive director of rules and equipment standards, told Press Association Sport today: "We have been working on these changes for the best part of 18 months and 18/4 was reviewed before the most recent TV evidence incident with Tiger.

"We don't want to have players in the same competition being judged by fundamentally different standards of evidence."

Woods feels there should be a time limit for such incidents, after which action cannot be taken, but Rickman added: "We believe it's important to try to establish the facts as accurately as we can and then apply the rules.

"We are fortunate that we do have an extended time frame, unlike other sports that have to make immediate decisions."

In April 2011, the R&A and the USGA adopted Decision 33-7/4.5, which authorises committees to waive the disqualification penalty for signing for an incorrect score when the player could not reasonably have been aware of a breach of the Rules that was later identified through video evidence.

That was known as the Harrington rule after Padraig Harrington was disqualified from a tournament in Abu Dhabi when a television viewer raised the issue of his ball moving as he marked it on a green.

Harrington had already signed his scorecard and therefore, the punishment could not merely be a two-stroke penalty.

"This seeks to build on that," Rickman added. "We've said the committee can waive the penalty and now we have the option of not applying one at all."